• $20

• Fun game play
• Lots of action
• Lots of monsters, weapons, and levels

• Takes a lot of memory
• Too easy
• Awful greyscale graphics

Design:
Cost/Benefit:
Coolness:
Overall:

The Plot
It's a shooting game, so of course there's a plot. And, of course, it means just about nothing. You are Serious Sam, and it is your job in life explore various ancient temples in Egypt, constantly bombarded by monsters. The plot doesn't affect the game much, although it does provide a nice story between each level.

Fighting
When I got this game in the mail I opened the box and was both surprised and amused by the teen rating. I honestly never thought I would see a Palm game labeled as such for blood and violence, but somehow it was decided that this was too graphic for some young palmers.

There's only 15 monsters, which may sound like a lot to you, but for me seeing the same old creatures got old rather quickly. Most of them aren't too challenging, as long as they don't sneak up behind you or appear in huge numbers you should escape unharmed.But when they do sneak up, you'd better act fast or else you'll soon be starting a new game. Although if you're badly injured you can just sit in a safe place and watch your health climb slowly back to 100.

There are quite a few weapons you can use, too. Although the standard gun they give you in the beginning can kill just about anything if you pull the trigger enough times, it just isn't as fun as some of the higher level artillery. Of course when you get the big weapons out you need ammo, and of course its not easy to find. But if you switch weapons both often and carefully you can have a great mix of high intensity fighting and enough ammunition to fight your way to the next level.

Graphics
Serious Sam is compatible with any unit running Palm OS 3.5 or higher, but as far as greyscale use goes, don't even bother. This game was off my m500 not long after I put it on simply because the graphics were flat-out unbearable! When the character stood still it wasn't too hard to see things clearly, but as soon as you tried to do anything the graphics blurred to a point where the screen was practically blank.

As for color usage, it wasn't perfect, but it was far from awful. When in motion the smooth scrolling was amazing, and it was loads of fun to explore the various levels on my Palm. Most of the levels were grainy, and some of them were exceptionally difficult to play because parts had horrendously poor shading. Overall the graphics were surprisingly good compared to what the screen shots had led me to believe.

Miscellaneous
The odds and ends, for the most part, aren't quite as positive as the game play itself. For starters, the game requires nearly two megs of space on your Palm. I know it is becoming ore and more common for Palm games to gobble up so much space, but it doesn't mean everyone enjoys deleting twenty smaller programs to make space for one larger program. Also, the instillation CD is meant for people using Windows. But if you have a Mac don't worry, you can take the files off the CD without a problem.

Conclusion
Serious Sam is a fun game, and although it can't compare to first-person shooters on the computer, it is definitely great in terms of the Palm world. If you're interested you should hop on over to their site, download the demo, and decide for yourself whether or not you want to spend $20.